Don’t be fooled. The ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on 19 July that Israel’s occupation of Palestine is unlawful is earth-shattering. Israel is a rogue state, according to the world’s highest court.
For that reason, the judgment will be studiously ignored by the cabal of western states and their medias that for decades have so successfully run cover for Israel...
Western politicians and columnists will keep emphasising that the World Court is offering nothing more than an “advisory opinion” and one that is “non-binding”.
What they won’t point out is that this opinion is the collective view of the world’s most eminent judges on international law, the people best positioned to rule on the occupation’s legality.
And it is non-binding only because the western powers who control our international bodies plan to do nothing to implement a decision that doesn’t suit them.
Nonetheless, the ruling will have dramatic consequences for Israel, and its western patrons, even if those consequences will take months, years or even decades to play out...
Apartheid ruleThe World Court’s ruling is most significant in that it permanently blows apart western states’ cover story about Israel.
The judges point out that Israel’s permanent occupation of the territories, and its transfer of Jewish settlers into them, has necessitated the development of two separate and distinct systems of laws.
One is for the Jewish settlers, enshrining for them the rights enjoyed by Israelis. Palestinians, by contrast, must submit to the whims of an alien and belligerent military regime.
There is a word for such an arrangement: apartheid.
Over the past decade, a consensus had already emerged in the world’s human rights community - from Amnesty International to Human Rights Watch - that Israel was an apartheid state.
Now the world’s highest judicial body has declared that it agrees.
Apartheid is a crime against humanity. This means that Israeli officials are war criminals, quite aside from the crimes they are currently committing in Gaza.
That was why the Israeli media reported panic inside the Israeli government at the ICJ ruling.
Officials fear that it will leave the International Criminal Court, its sister court, with no option but to issue arrest warrants against Netanyahu and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, as already requested by its chief prosecutor.
It is also likely to strengthen the ICC’s resolve to prosecute more senior Israeli officials for crimes associated with Israel’s settlement programme.
A former Israeli foreign ministry official told the Haaretz newspaper that the World Court ruling had punctured Israel’s claim to be a western-style state: “The democratic aura is no longer protecting us as it did before."
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/icj-clears-fog-hiding-western-support-isra...